And I thought Final Destination 3 (2006) with “death by tanning bed” was

bad. The fourth — and hardly final TheFinal Destination (2009) — dispenses with the plot altogether, and just goes for the “set ’em up/knock ’em down” kill scenes, in which Death, only temporarily deprived, gets what it came for. They did this one in 3D. So what?

Nick O’Bannon, his girlfriend and another Guess Jeans™ couple are white-trashin’ it at a race car track. Foreseeing a horrific accident that ends up with a good portion the grandstand viewing audience getting either cut in half or turned into human Jell-O™ by ricochetting car parts/tires, Nick barely gets his friends, as well as a few others, out of exploding harm’s way.

As with all the FD movies, they were supposed to die. Now Death hunts them down and sets up elaborate traps that end in all accounts being paid in full. The mousetrap scenes are so evenly paced you could set your watch to ’em. Even then, they’re just not that innovative. One guy gets his butt/innards sucked out through a swimming pool drain. Really? That’s all you got?

Another one finds a girl trapped in a car wash about to get her face sheared off by those big roll-y things. Big time flinch — she gets out…and later dies by impalement. Hang on a sec — gotta yawn.

Another guy gets plowed into by an ambulance (plagiarizing the bus scene in Final Destination/2000). Another is dragged down the street by a runaway tow truck and catches on fire, burning alive. Man, this yawning is contagious.

But the biggest rip-off of all comes at the end when a semi plows into a coffee shop and smashes into the last three remaining survivors. It’s right here they cut to a computer-animated x-ray “cartoon” of the bodies getting mangled, broken and busted. They even showed an x-ray of the truck!

Stick with Final Destination and Final Destination 2/2003, and leave the rest for Death to clean up.

The filmmakers lost sight of what made their first two Death-comes-calling Final Destination movies so kick ass and turned this franchise into an assembly line of “yeah, what ev” deaths.

In Final Destination 3 (2006) there’s no story to speak of and the killings just aren’t that cool. (Example: Two topless teen chicks roast to well done in a sun-tanning bed. When does that not happen on a daily basis?) Attempting to piece together clues as to how and why Death is coming for them, a guy and his girl go through the motions to try and stop the chain of events that will inevitably lead to their expiration dates.

Two sorta cool things: The DVD comes with a feature that allows you to “choose their fate,” meaning you have the power to save their lives. I kept choosing “die,” so I don’t know what happens when you hit the “don’t die” button.

The alternate ending is much better than anything the movie has to offer and echoes the original FD, but with a train instead of a plane. While I might have gone with a submarine loaded with Mentos™ and Cherry Coke™ heading for a busy intersection with malfunctioning stop lights, I’m down with the choo choo.